That ability to use chemistry to help other sciences is being illustrated across many disciplines. Take the way scientists have combined chemistry with archaeology as part of new research from the University of Bristol.

The team took as its starting point evidence from prehistoric rock art that was interpreted as showing honey hunters, and images from Pharaonic Egyptian murals that show early scenes of beekeeping. However, the close association between early farmers and the honey bee remained uncertain so to find out more archaeologists turned to chemistry. The study gathered together evidence for the presence of beeswax in the pottery vessels of the first farmers of Europe by investigating chemical components trapped in the clay fabric of more than 6,000 potsherds (pottery fragments) from more than 150 Old World archaeological sites.

The distinctive chemical ‘fingerprint’ of beeswax was detected at multiple Neolithic sites across Europe indicating just how widespread the association between humans and honeybees was in prehistoric times. For example, beeswax was detected in cooking pots from an archaeological site in Turkey, dating to the seventh millennium BC – the oldest evidence yet for the use of bee products by Neolithic farmers. The paper was based on more than 20 years of research carried out at Bristol’s Organic Geochemistry Unit (School of Chemistry) led by Professor Richard Evershed. Co-authors of the paper include archaeologists involved in the large scale investigation of sites across Europe, the Near East and Northern Africa.

Professor Evershed said: “The lack of a fossil record of the honey bee means it’s ecologically invisible for most of the past 10,000 years. Although evidence from ancient Egyptian murals and prehistoric rock art suggests mankind’s association with the honey bee dates back over thousands of years, when and where this association emerged has been unknown – until now. “Our study is the first to provide unequivocal evidence, based solely on a chemical ‘fingerprint’, for the palaeoecological distribution of an economically and culturally important animal. It shows widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early farmers and pushes back the chronology of human-honeybee association to substantially earlier dates.”